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Thirteen dead in Serbia's worst peacetime killing

TIM PALMER: To the horror of another mass killing, this time in Europe, and Serbia is reeling from what's been described as its worst peacetime killing.

A war veteran is thought to have killed 13 people before shooting his wife, and then apparently turning the gun on himself. Both are in hospital in a critical condition.

Serbia's government has held an emergency session as investigators try to establish the motive.

Europe correspondent, Mary Gearin reports.

MARY GEARIN: Forensic experts quietly went about their work gathering evidence along a trail of killing in the small village of Velika Ivanca, 40 kilometres southwest of Belgrade. It's a close-knit community, and the neighbours are in shock.

VOX POP (translated): He was a good man, there isn't a person who wouldn't open their door to him. He helped everyone in this area, he didn't do harm to anyone. But whoever answered the door today he shot them first and he carried on shooting.

MARY GEARIN: Police have named 60-year-old war veteran Ljubisa Bogdanovic as the suspect. It's thought he used a handgun as he went from house to house, in the early hours of the morning, killing 13 people, including a two-year-old boy, mostly as they slept.

Prime Minister Ivica Dacic spoke of the country's shock.

IVICA DACIC (translated): This was an unexpected crime, nothing indicated this might happen. In recent years things like this remind us of other countries where tragedies of this kind are a common occurrence, and maybe that should serve as a warning to us, to start paying attention to some other issues in our society, and not just policing.

MARY GEARIN: The motive is still unclear. A hospital spokeswoman said the man had no history of mental illness. A neighbour said the shooter's father and uncle had committed suicide. His neighbours say he fought in Vukovar, one of the Serbia's bloodiest battles with Croatia.

Ivana Miloradovic, world news editor with the Serbian Broadcasting Corporation, says the killings have thrown the country into soul searching.

IVANA MILORADOVIC: People are stressing that the state actually lacks financial, professional and logistic resources to deal with this type of crisis, while the violence especially among family members is on the rise.

MARY GEARIN: The crime is set to highlight Serbia's post-war scars. James Ker-Lindsay is a senior research fellow at the London School of Economics specialising in South Eastern Europe.

JAMES KER-LINDSAY: Maybe this has been something that had been brewing for a number of years, we just don't really have the full facts yet.

MARY GEARIN: Can you put this in some wider context? This is the country that was at war not that long ago and presumably awash with guns. Is that a problem and how used to this sort of event is Serbia?

JAMES KER-LINDSAY: These are incredibly rare incidents in Serbia, there isn't actually a tradition of gun crime in the country, I mean it certainly is compared with other countries which you still have a large number of weapons, and you have a society that's been traumatised by war. It's actually very, very rare to see something like this.

MARY GEARIN: James Ker-Lindsay says Serbia will need to examine its high levels of alcoholism, youth unemployment and sharp divisions in income if it's to make a full response to this tragic crime.